


sorry, tsukki!

by dietmobu



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet Ending, Car Accidents, Character Death, Character Study, Five Stages of Grief, Free Day Prompt, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, I wrote it platonically with eventual something, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kuroo/Tsukishima if you squint but it can be read platonically, M/M, Other, Suicide Attempt, Tsukishima ends up okay, Tsukkiyama Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 04:10:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20091067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dietmobu/pseuds/dietmobu
Summary: No one expects death, Tsukishima knows this, has perished and thrived in it. So, he does what anyone can do after the unexpected. Tsukishima keeps living.





	sorry, tsukki!

**Author's Note:**

> I, in all honesty, don't know why I wrote this. I'm going through a huge lapse in my life, and needed a vent. Please enjoy! Please comment if you enjoyed, and leave a kudos.

No one expects death.

That’s all Tsukisima could feel. That he didn’t _ expect _ it. Like anyone wakes up _ expecting _death, and he has to hear that ring around his head and burn between his eyes, because that was the only word on his tongue anymore. And maybe, just maybe, if he says it enough times, it’ll go to nonsense in his mouth; Yamaguchi always said repeating things until they didn’t make sense would make it all just a little more okay. Yamaguchi always said things like that. Yamaguchi was the only one who said things like that.

It was cold, he thought. When he was told about it, when he drove to the hospital, when he held Yamaguchi’s hand, when he felt water hit his cheeks. He just remembers feeling frigid, like he could see his breath in the air, and his lungs were getting so solid with ice that they were cracking and he was _ choking _on the pieces.

Yamaguchi looked dead before he was. His eyes were closed, but the side of his face was marred from road gravel and glass, and his hair was matted down with thick, red blood, and his entire body was slack. He didn’t look asleep, he didn’t look like he was resting his eyes, he looked dead. Tsukishima remembers seeing him and thinking that. It was real.

No one expects death.

He held Yamaguchi’s hand. It was lifeless and still, as if all the things that made Yamaguchi Yamaguchi had already been sucked out. And Tsukishima couldn’t help the break in his voice, as he whispered to his best friend incoherently, as he took thick, linted breaths around saturated sobs, his body shaking, he truly _ felt _. Tsukishima never thought he’d feel emotion so strongly, but Yamaguchi proved him capable.

His freckles looked drawn on, from the paleness of skin underneath, and it looked wrong. It looked fake and waxy. For the first time in their entire lives, Yamaguchi looked ugly. Blood, and burns, and bandages in places volleyball could never injure. It was disgusting.

Tsukishima threw up. He threw up a lot. Akiteru loomed in the doorway, but didn’t say anything.

Yamaguchi was more than a best friend, Tsukishima knew that. A drunk driver took that from him. A drunk driver took his laugh, his smile, his freckles, his sleep talking, his nose scrunch, his tears, his voice, his love, his pain. It was _ unfair. _

It wasn’t instant, and Tsukishima thinks about that too much.

No one expects death. 

He was dead. Yamaguchi was in a coma, but his brain was flat, he wasn’t thinking or feeling or moving. He was a heartbeat in a dead body. Yamaguchi was _ dead. _

They didn’t disconnect life support right away. Tsukishima had two days with him. With Yamaguchi’s heartbeat thrumming against his chest, too slow to be the boy he knew, too rhythmic, nothing like the pounding press he was used to feeling in the other’s fingertips late at night, under his lips at Yamaguchi’s neck, humming through his tongue. So Tsukishima listened to the beeping, and hated it.

People visited, but Tsukishima couldn’t see past the cold hand he held in his own. He heard voices and footsteps, he felt light touches, reassurances, but Yamaguchi was dead and to hell with anything that wasn’t Yamaguchi.

Suga hugged him, he took it. He was crying again. He was hungry. He was tired. He was scared. If he closed his eyes, he’d wake up to this, proving it wasn’t a nightmare. He just wanted it to _ end. _

The flatline haunts him. He hears it in the microwave chime, in the volleyball whistle, in the hum of the laundromat machines. Everything screams that Yamaguchi is dead. The shirts that weren’t quite his but weren’t exactly Yamaguchi’s, Yamaguchi’s toothbrush, the space next to him when he walks home, the shock that floods him when he pulls his headphones off his ears out of habit only to have no voice fill the void left behind. Everything screams that Yamaguchi is dead. Tsukishima drowns in this.

He tries to kill himself. It’s easy. Akiteru is watching TV in the living room. His parents are asleep. His eyes are wet. His shaving razor has blood on it.

He isn’t left alone again, after that. And he isn’t aloud to have his own razor.

His grades are F’s. He quite volleyball. He threw away his dinosaur books. He smashed his video game console. He tore up his bug patterned sheets. He smashed his sports glasses. He yelled until his voice gave out and then continued screaming into empty words. He punched the wall. He smashed his mirror. He kicked his bed frame. He burned for a bit, just to watch the flames.

Kuroo started visiting him a few weeks after everything. A lot. It was like having a babysitter, an overgrown and loud one, who ate all the food in the house and laughed too loud, and snored too much. Kuroo was big, all broad shoulders and bulky biceps, smooth, clear skin, spikey and inky black hair haphazardly thrown over his forehead and off his head, he was _ different _ . Kuroo was nothing like Yamaguchi. He filled an entirely different space, one he fit in before, but now it fit next to Tsukishima alright, even if _ it wasn’t Yamaguchi. _

Kuroo made him leave the house too much, to go to the gas station at 2 in the morning, or to walk around Nekoma’s cherry trees, and sometimes just to see the way the clouds took different shapes in different parts of the town. He talked, because Tsukishima couldn’t find his voice anymore, but he never asked about volleyball, because if he did, Kuroo wouldn’t be aloud to do what he did. The other, now in college, steered for Tsukishima when he couldn’t find the wheel, and for the first time in his entire life, he was okay to relinquish the control he didn’t even have anymore, as long as Kuroo never made him acknowledge that he was constantly looking back.

Yachi tried to talk to him. Tsukishima didn’t let her. He watched Yachi suffer alone, for the sake of preserving his own pain. He didn’t want to share his grief.

No one expects death, Tsukishima knows this, has perished and thrived in it. So, he does what anyone can do after the unexpected. Tsukishima keeps living.

He says his first words again 4 hours after the day of the anniversary ends. It was 4 in the morning exactly, Kuroo was next to him, it was cold, he was tired, it was hard to breath still. Kuroo held him tighter, but not too tight. No one said anything after the whisper of words.

_ “Shut up, Yamaguchi.” _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
